Unapproved - T-Shirt Design

This design is a reaction to the political act that went beyond protection and into the dark realms of censorship. The Comics Code Authority was created to appease public and political prosecution. It’s regulations limited comic book writers and artists creativity for over 25 years. While comics flourished in Japan and throughout Europe, the medium was under attack in the US. It’s stamp was placed on every Comic Book cover for all that time. It’s affects helped retard public opinion of comics which still has echoes to this day. The Code was a by-product of the anti-commie crusades of the 1950’s and partly due to the works a popular psychologist named Wertham. His book “Seduction of the Innocent” claimed that comic books would cause their readers to become criminals and sociopaths. He later retracted his statements and was found to have falsified his research. Nevertheless the damage was done. It is chilling to realise that less than ten years after the Nazis were burning books, American citizens were burning comics with the same malevolent fervour. In fairness, the code was created to protect. However it restricted beyond it’s aims. In comparison, if the equivalent of the comics code authority was continued in cinema; then films such as “Apocalypse Now” and “Psycho” would never have been made. After 25 years of outside censorship the comics industry is mostly free to be responsible for itself. It’s nicer nowadays. I can read a comic in public without people assuming that I have a learning disability… To put it quite simply I think you should be able to dream free as long as you don’t hurt anyone doing it. I reworked the original logo for my own comic which sits outside that code. It started as one of my student works and finished as what you see today. I reworked the original typeface in Photoshop and added a subliminal hypnotic pattern to represent the brainwashing that occurred to an entire culture throughout the fifties.